If a time machine existed, there might be several periods and more importantly places cultural travelers would love to go back and visit. Going way back, a trip to Florence during the Renaissance would be heaven for art lovers. Also appealing would be Paris in the 1920s, an explosion of modern art and literature and an exploration of new modes of living.
More recently, there were many happening places to be during the 1960s, such as the Greenwich Village folk scene and San Francsico for the psychedelic experience, but few would rival England during the Swinging London scene. While this time only lasted a few years, primarily in the mid-’60s, that time-frame is somewhat elastic. Though new modes of living, art, fashion, photography, film, pirate radio, the shops, the clubs and other happenings exploded, perhaps the music of the era was its best feature and has had the most enduring legacy.
This new 3-CD, 63-track box set presents some of the grooviest sounds from that amorphous time, with tracks here from 1963 through 1968, but it also includes music that is part of other scenes, genres and sounds. The tracks here mostly reflect the period just before The Beatles made the A Hard Days’s Night movie and mostly before psychedelic music seemed to be at its peak.
There are many familiar names included here such as Kiki Dee, Manfred Mann, The Yardbirds, Dusty Springfield, The Troggs, The Kinks, Eric Burdon & the Animals, The Who, Tom Jones, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, The Spencer Davis Group, The Easybeats, Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames, Small Faces, Jack Bruce (including as a member of The Graham Bond Organization with Ginger Baker), The Moody Blues, and Petula Clark (with England Swings). The tracks from these artists are wonderful, some are even fairly well known and certainly Small Faces, The Kinks and The Who were also central to the mod scene.
Manfred Mann’s inclusion, “5-4-3-2-1,” was the theme song for the seminal British music television show Ready Steady Go! It was commissioned by the show’s producers and became the group’s first hit. “That Little Old Heartache” by David John & The Mood was written by Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone. Check out the guitar work of a very young Jimmy Page on “Paging Sullivan” from the London Studio Group.
“Can’t Help Thinking About Me” features a young David Bowie with The Lower Third. Another fine rarity is the demo version of “Sorrow” from the Merseys, which Geoge Harrison borrowed from on “It’s All Too Much.” “She Said Yeah,” a cover by Neil Christian & The Crusaders, is a song that was also covered by The Rolling Stones on the UK version of Out Of Our Heads. The demo for “Winchester Cathedral,” which became a big hit for the New Vaudeville Band, is included here by John Carter.
The musical selections that really reflect the glorious, fizzy effervescence of that all too brief and frothy swinging London time though are a bit more unfamiliar and quite rare and several are instrumentals. Those selections are from obscure studio bands, underground musical artists, actors, models, and the infamous such as the Mood-Mosaic, Twiggy, The Laurie Johnson Orchestra, Patrick MacNee & Honor Blackman, The Mike Cotton Sound, The John Schroeder Orchestra, Electric Banana, Whistling Jack Smith, Mandy Rice-Davies, The London Studio Group, Dave Anthony’s Moods, Ron Grainer, Samantha Juste (a model and the pop music name for the future wife of Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees), Stan Butcher, His Birds and Brass, and Ken Woodman & His Piccadilly Brass.
British record labels of the time such as Parlophone, Philips, Decca, Pye, Fontana, Piccadilly, Marmalade, Immediate, and Reaction are featured throughout. There are also ten previously unreleased tracks, alternate versions, demos and even a flexi-disc only release now available for the first time with this set.
This box is much like previous releases from the Cherry Red music label group. The three CDs are housed in cardboard sleeves inside a rugged clamshell box. There is also a lavish 48-page booklet. It includes stylish period photos, a short essay and liner notes. Each track is annotated with a blurb, dates, and detailed label data. The booklet makes for informed reading. This is a must-have box set for fans of the groovy sounds of Swinging London, is highly collectible and is good value for one’s money.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
